What do the following items have in common: the Declaration of Independence, Da Vinci’s notebooks, Bach’s musical scores, Rembrandt’s drawings, Shakespeare’s plays, and the Magna Carta?
Give up?
These examples, along with countless other documents ranging from the historically important to the more mundane, were all recorded using iron gall ink, which is made – in part – from the protrusions created after oak gall wasps lay their eggs within oak trees. [Read more…] about Making Ink From Oak Galls: Some History & Science
I’m not one to shed a tear when authoritarian rulers die, but once they’re gone, picnics become a lot more dangerous. Toward the end of summer, just in time for Labor Day picnics and County Fairs, the original queen in every yellowjacket wasp colony dies.
I consider the lack of biting insects and other invertebrates, to be a wondrous gift of the winter season.
My son, wise beyond his years it would seem, taught me an invaluable lesson when he was a teenager living at home. Any time I got worked into a froth about a broken car, leaky roof or other serious, but non-cataclysmic setback, he’d put things in perspective for me: “Pops, it could always be worse – you could be on fire.” 